Aden (Vampires in America)

by D. B. Reynolds

  “Oh,” she repeated stupidly. She should have thought about that. Aden and all his guys would be sleeping helplessly, while she . . . she could probably do anything she wanted. She could kill them all, and they’d never know. She stared at Aden in sudden alarm. If she could get to them, maybe someone else could, too. “Do you have security? Like guards or something to be sure no one sneaks in here?”

  “We have guards,” he assured her, reaching up to brush tangled curls away from her face. “And our sleeping quarters are very secure. We’ve been doing this a century or two.”

  She nodded, her throat suddenly too clogged with emotion to permit words. She was overcome by the brutal image of Aden lying helplessly asleep, his muscular body stretched out naked, one arm thrown over his face in complete abandon, while a faceless form, dark and malevolent, crept through the shadows and…

  She shook her head to clear the horrifying picture and felt tears threatening. She turned away so Aden wouldn’t see and was struck by another terrible thought. Oh, no. No, no, no. She could not be falling for him. She wasn’t that stupid, was she? This was supposed to be a bad boy fling, not an affair almost guaranteed to break her heart.

  She climbed off the big bed and began gathering her clothes.

  “Sidonie?”

  “I’ll be out of here in a minute,” she said, without looking at him. “It won’t take me long to get dressed. I can shower—” She squeaked in surprise when he was suddenly right there in front of her, forcing her to look at him. He was so beautiful. Evolution had gotten that much right, at least. Beautiful and deadly, the perfect combination for a predator.

  Aden was studying her curiously. He ran a thumb under her eye, catching a lone tear with a gentleness that was surprising in a creature capable of the kind of violence she’d witnessed earlier.

  “You’ll come back later,” he told her. There wasn’t even a hint of a question in there. He was either completely self-assured, or just plain bossy. Unfortunately, either way she didn’t have the strength to turn him down. Not yet. She wanted to keep her bad boy a little longer.

  “I will,” she agreed. “Any particular time?”

  “The usual.”

  She looked up from where she’d sat down to tie her shoes and was distracted for a moment by the view of a very naked Aden from this perspective. It took her a moment to remember what she wanted to say.

  “Do we have a usual?” she managed, then laughed at his flat look of disapproval. She stood, going up on tiptoes to kiss his scowling face, her arms circling his neck. “There’s the no-nonsense Aden I’m used to. I’ll be here.”

  “See that you are,” he said, walking her to the door. And then he kissed her good-bye. A full-body kiss, deep and slow and promising all sorts of dark, erotic pleasures.

  When he finally let her go, she had to hang onto him for a bit, her legs were so wobbly. Yeah, she definitely needed more of that before she gave up her bad boy fling.

  She waved as she walked down the hallway, hearing his door close behind her with a very solid thunk of sound. The red doors were equally substantial, and when she turned to make sure they’d closed completely, she found they had already locked behind her. Down the hall, the elevator was open and waiting. She took it down to the fifth floor and was nodding a somewhat embarrassed hello to the guards when one of the men approached as if he’d been waiting for her. He was slightly older, maybe mid-forties and had an air of authority.

  “Ms. Reid?”

  “Yes?” she responded, wondering if she’d triggered some sort of alarm by coming down in the elevator when she did.

  “My name’s Earl Hamilton. I’m chief of Lord Aden’s daylight security team. Lord Aden said I should introduce myself.”

  Sid smiled. Bad boy, schmad boy. How could you not love a guy who thought about you like that?

  “Thank you, Mister Hamilton.”

  “Oh, call me Earl. Everyone does.”

  “Earl. It’s a pleasure, thank you. I’ll just—” A thought occurred to her. “Let me give you my cell number, Earl, just in case I can ever help out.”

  Numbers exchanged—she got Earl’s number, too—Sid made her way to the street and climbed into the taxi which Earl had summoned for her. The ride was thankfully short. At her own building, she rode up to her condo, went directly to the shower, and then to bed. She was nearly asleep before she realized there’d been something . . . or rather, someone very important who’d been absent from the night’s bloodbath at the slavers’ holding house.

  She reached for her cell phone automatically and called Aden, not remembering until she got his voice mail that he wouldn’t get the message until later, and she simply could have waited until she saw him. But as long as she had him, or at least his so-abrupt-it-was-almost-rude voicemail response, she left a message.

  “Hey, it’s me. We’ll talk later, and you probably know this, but . . . we didn’t get everyone at that house tonight. You know that, right?”

  She barely managed to disconnect before she was sound asleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  “WHAT DO YOU mean we didn’t get everyone?”

  “And good evening to you, my lord,” Sid said. She dropped her backpack and walked right up to Aden, smiling up at him expectantly.

  He stared down at her, his eyes sparking blue fire and promising all sorts of retribution, but he fisted a big hand in her jacket, yanked her closer, and then he kissed her, starting out hard and dutiful, but quickly turning seductive and ending with a sensuous flourish of his tongue that left her breathless.

  “We’ll continue that later,” he murmured directly into her ear, and she wiggled happily.

  “Now, what did you mean by your message?” he demanded.

  Sid pressed a hand to her chest, still trying to catch her breath. She glanced up to let him know an answer was coming and found him regarding her with a smug look that said he knew exactly why she was having trouble breathing. She rolled her eyes, but he only winked back at her.

  “Okay,” she said, taking a full breath. “I didn’t see everyone you killed last night, because—”

  “Because some of them died before you made it through the door,” Aden interrupted impatiently. “What’s your point?”

  “I’m getting there,” she admonished him. “I think you missed someone. The slave business was Klemens’s operation, but he didn’t do the grunt work. There was another vampire who ran the whole thing, drugs and slaves both. I got the impression he did other stuff, too, because he wasn’t around much, but he was definitely in charge. His name was Carl Pinto.”

  Aden glanced over her head, and she turned to see Bastien coming through the door to the office where they stood. Bastien was the most buttoned-up of Aden’s vampires, always dressed in black, his hair a neat razor cut. He moved with an economy of motion that Sid thought must indicate military training, maybe Special Forces or something.

  “Pinto,” Bastien repeated, then shared a look with Aden before asking Sid, “When was the last time you saw him?”

  She grabbed the notebook out of her bag and thumbed through it, looking for Pinto’s name. “It was just before the big gala,” she said, half to herself, then found the note she was looking for. “Yep. Eight days, to be precise. He was at their place in Fuller Park. It’s kind of a drug clearinghouse for them.”

  Both vampires were looking at her oddly.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I don’t want you lurking around drug houses anymore,” Aden said flatly. “Especially not in Fuller Park.”

  She shrugged. “I’m careful. And that’s where they do their business. It’s hard to keep track of them if I don’t go where they go. Duh.”

  “Sidonie.”

  For the first time, she registered how intent he was. How angry. At her? Why would he be angry at her?

  “What?” she asked, confused and a little irritated that he was giving her attitude for doing her job.

  “I understand your need for revenge for your f
riend’s murder,” Aden told her, clearly trying not to be patronizing and failing miserably. “But this has to end. If Pinto is still alive—”

  “He is.”

  “—we will take care of it. These people are too dangerous for you to continue this surveillance on your own. It’s only dumb luck that you haven’t been seriously harmed before this.”

  Did he just say dumb luck?

  “If not for me,” she pointed out with admirable patience, “you’d still believe Pinto was dead. I think there’s a little more to what I do than dumb luck.”

  “We’re getting off the subject,” he said, shutting her down. “Bastien, if Pinto’s alive—and it seems he is,” he added, before Sid could do more than open her mouth to protest. “I want him found. Get Elias on it immediately.”

  Bastien nodded, turned on his heel, and left the office, leaving Sid alone with Aden.

  “You,” he snarled, closing his fingers around the front of her jacket again, pulling her against his body and up onto her toes, and holding her there as he lowered his mouth to hers. But Sid wasn’t ready to kiss and make up. She bit his lip angrily and pulled back.

  “Look,” she said, trying without success to push him away. “I get the whole alpha male, vampire lord-of-all-he-surveys thing, okay? I kind of even like it in the bedroom. But out in the real world, you are not the boss of me. I don’t forfeit my brain just because we have sex. And I’ll do whatever I think is necessary to get my story. And it’s not like most of what I do is that dangerous. I’m not aiming for Woodward and Bernstein. But I’m not stupid either. I don’t take unnecessary risks, and I’m careful with the risks I do take.”

  Aden was eyeing her with very little expression on his face, which made it difficult to tell how he was receiving her liberated woman speech. Whatever his reaction was, however, it didn’t extend to his body, which was ready to fuck, and no question about it.

  “Kind of like it?” he asked finally, one corner of his mouth curling upward with amusement as he focused on the one part of her speech that she’d thought he’d have no problem with. “I think I can do better than that.”

  Sid’s first thought was that she wouldn’t survive if sex between them got any better than what they’d done last night. But she didn’t tell him that.

  “I’m serious,” she insisted, trying to keep from smiling back at him.

  “So am I,” he insisted.

  “Aden—” she began, but Bastien chose that moment to return.

  “My lord,” he said. “Elias is here.”

  Aden glanced at her, but anticipating his vampires-only speech, she said, “I’ll sit in the outer office. I want to check some things anyway, and I’ve got my laptop with me. You all have Wi-Fi?”

  “Of course,” Bastien assured her. “The code’s above the keypad on the phone.”

  “Good enough,” she said. She looped her backpack over her shoulder, but then she paused, pretending a thought had just occurred to her, and said, “Don’t forget to engage your cone of silence device.”

  Aden rolled his eyes, but still managed to give her butt a firm swat as she walked away. What was it with him and her ass?

  She sat down at the desk, pulled out her laptop, and went to work as Bastien and Elias disappeared into Aden’s office and closed the door. What she’d told Aden about her last sighting of Carl Pinto was correct as far as it went, but her full notes, going all the way back to the beginning of her investigation, had all been transferred into her laptop. She had a system that let her track the individual players over time. And just as she’d been able to predict which house the slavers would use for this month’s transfer, she’d be able to see the pattern in Pinto’s movements that would help Aden track the vamp down and get rid of him once and for all.

  She was still hunched over her notes when the office door opened and Elias walked by sometime later. She nodded at him and waited to see if Aden would call her back in. When he didn’t, she wasn’t particularly concerned. Figuring he and Bastien were still conspiring, she flexed her fingers, ready to go back to her own work, but then realized Elias had left the door partway open, and she could hear Aden and Bastien talking. Eavesdropping shamelessly—she was a reporter, after all—she stopped working and leaned toward the open door, listening.

  “… a concern, my lord.” She caught the tail end of Bastien’s sentence.

  Aden laughed dismissively. “You know me better than that, Bastien. When have I ever let a woman get in my way?”

  The two males laughed, and Bastien said something she didn’t catch, but she did hear Aden’s reply.

  “It’s all about blood, my friend,” he growled. “But don’t worry. She won’t be around much longer.”

  Sid blinked, surprised at how much his words stung. She wasn’t even sure they were talking about her, but she couldn’t shake the sense that they were. That Bastien had been concerned she would get in the way of their plans to seize the territory, and that hers was the blood Aden had dismissed so readily.

  It shouldn’t have bothered her. After all, it was no more than she’d been telling herself all along, that this thing between them was temporary. Her bad boy fling. So why did it hurt so much to hear him say it?

  She stood and gathered her things. There was no more reason for her to stay. Aden didn’t need her—he’d made that abundantly clear—and her reason for being here in the first place was done. She’d wanted justice for Janey, and she’d gotten that. Or close enough. Carl Pinto was still out there somewhere, but she had the tools to find him. Better tools than Aden had. After all, she was the one who’d found the house last night. She’d find Pinto, and, despite what Aden seemed to think, she wouldn’t be stupid about it either. She’d find him and pass on the information to Aden via telephone. During the day, when she could simply leave a voice mail message. And that would be it as far as Aden was concerned. There’d be no need to humiliate herself further, no need to pretend that there was something besides sex going on between them. Because he clearly wasn’t feeling anything at all.

  Time to let go of her bad boy and go back to her real life.

  The phone rang as she closed her laptop and slipped it into her backpack. Someone picked it up before it rang a second time. Not that she would have answered it anyway. She wanted no more part in vampire business. She’d already gotten in deeper than she’d ever intended.

  Stepping over to the office, she spied Aden and Bastien deep in conversation. Whatever they were discussing now, they’d gone back to their secret vampire voices. Maybe something to do with the phone call. Not that she cared, she reminded herself.

  Aden looked up the moment she appeared in the doorway. A few minutes ago, she’d have interpreted that to mean they had a connection. Now, she just figured he wanted to make sure she didn’t overhear whatever he and Bastien were plotting.

  “I can see you guys are busy,” she said, with false cheer. “And if I’m going to finish this, I’ll need my old notebooks, which are back at my condo. I’ll head over there now, and if I come up with anything, I’ll give you a call.”

  Bastien smiled, but she could tell by his quick glance at Aden that he was waiting for the boss to react before he said anything.

  Aden just studied her silently, as if waiting for her to say more. But there wasn’t anything else. She was going home.

  ADEN WATCHED Sidonie as she stood there in his office doorway and fed him a huge steaming pile of bullshit that she apparently expected him to take at face value.

  “I’ll give you a call,” she said, and turned away without so much as a wave.

  He stared at the empty doorway until he heard the ding of the elevator, followed by the sound of the doors closing. Then he glanced at Bastien. “Put Kage on her. And tell Hamilton I want her tailed during the day.”

  Something had put a bug up her ass. He didn’t know what it was, but he intended to find out. If she thought she could dismiss him with a lame excuse and walk away, she had a lot to learn. And he was going to
enjoy teaching it to her.

  But not tonight. That phone call had been formal notification of a challenge. Not from Silas, which might have been expected, but from a vampire named Ramiro Salvador. Aden didn’t know much about Salvador. He was from Mexico, which made him one of Lord Enrique’s people, and he’d been at the gathering on Sunday which had officially launched the challenge. Officially being the operative word, since the maneuvering, and the killing, had begun days before… as Aden had reason to know.

  But other than those few bits of information, Salvador was a cipher to Aden, which was never a good thing going into a challenge. Bastien was working their contacts here in the Midwest and elsewhere trying to find out what he could, but they didn’t have much time. The challenge was set to take place an hour from now in Washington Park. Not the neighborhood, but the actual park. It was a big public space on Chicago’s South Side, consisting of several hundred acres, most of it grass and trees, and largely deserted at this time of night. A public park wasn’t the place Aden would have chosen for a challenge battle, but then he had private properties of his own within the city that he could use. He’d been building his network here for some time, well before Lucas had finally offed Klemens. Lucas had tapped Aden to run his Kansas City operation several decades ago, which had put him only a short flight away from Chicago.

  On the other hand, this was probably the first time Salvador had spent any time in the city. Notwithstanding the significant drug trade Klemens had been carrying on with certain interests in Mexico, there wasn’t much in the way of cross-border dealings between vampire territories. Raphael was trying to change that, trying to get the North American territories talking to each other in order to fight a common enemy.

  But that was in the future. For tonight, it meant there’d been no opportunity for Salvador to check out the battleground or set up any kind of headquarters in advance. Even if Klemens had allowed the foreign vampire to visit his city, Enrique probably wouldn’t have agreed. The Lord of Mexico was said to be very old school with his vampires and saw the rivalry between the territories as a good thing.